The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for analyzing and displaying the operation of a computer.
The event trace technique, one of computer operation measuring techniques, can recreate in detail the operational history of a computer to be measured because events occurring within the computer are recorded in chronological order.
The tools, each for graphically displaying the operation of a computer, which fully use that advantage, have been developed. For example, there are WindView (http://www.windriver.com/products/html/windview2_ds.html) and Linux Trace Toolkit (http://www.opersys.com/LTT/screenshots.html).
These tools arrange processes within a system to be measured in the vertical direction of the vertical axis, with the horizontal axis taken in the direction of time, and graphically display the periods during which the processes are operating. In the timing diagrams displayed by those tools, the line segment in the horizontal direction represents the period during which the process is operating. It is may be considered that horizontal line segment is identical to the line segment displayed based on the process operation display data of the present invention. In the case of WindView, the line segment in the vertical direction represents process changeover. That is, the X-coordinate represents the time when a process has changed. In Y-coordinates at both ends of the line segment, one end corresponds to the position of the previously operated (or saved) process while the other end corresponds to the position of the process which begins to operate (to resume) newly. In the case of Linux Trace Toolkit, the time slot during which the line segment operates in the user mode is displayed at the position of the process. In the kernel mode, all processes are collectively displayed at the bottom. Hence, the line segment in the vertical direction is used to show transition of the user mode and transition of the kernel mode.
Therefore, the vertical line in the timing chart displayed by those tools represents operational results only but does not represent logical relationships between processes. For that reason, when plural processes are shown so as to perform operations cooperatively while performing inter-process communications, it is difficult to grasp the relationships between the processes. Particularly, when the system operation that processes plural transactions in parallel is displayed, the vertical lines representing the operational results are drawn independently of the logical relationships of processes. Hence, it is impossible to grasp the logical relationships of processes.